In the following excerpt, associate professor of English and Russian at Smith College, Gibian, offers an authoritative study of pagan and Christian symbolism in Crime and Punishment. Chief among them are the imagery of water, vegetation, sun and air, the resurrection of Lazarus and Christ, and the earth.

It may seem paradoxical to claim that critics have not sufficiently concerned themselves with Dostoevsky's attack against rationalism in Crime and Punishment; yet this aspect of the novel has frequently failed to receive adequate attention, not because it has been overlooked, but because often it has been immediately noticed, perfunctorily mentioned, and then put out of mind as something obvious. Few writers have examined the consequence of the anti-rationalistic tenor of the novel: the extent to which It is paralleled by the structural devices incorporated in the work.

Dostoevsky held that dialectics, self-seeking, and exclusive reliance on reason ("reason and...